How to Solve Almost Any Problem

Introduction

This is a book about stuckness, and how to escape it.

You know you’ve got a problem when you want to do something but you don’t know what to do. That’s the premise underlying the title of this book. How to solve almost any problem? Really? Well – yes, if we define a problem as a situation in which we’re stuck.

But problems seem to come in so many different shapes and sizes. Deciding what to have for dinner; introducing a new product to market; solving a mathematical equation; saving a marriage: can we really think about all of these problems in the same way? Of course not. But we can approach them using a method that will help us identify how to think about them.

So we need to begin by defining our terms. The first important point ...